Moby Dick: or, the White Whale eBook

CHAPTER 61

If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing
of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different
object.

“When you see him ’quid,” said the
savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his hoisted
boat, “then you quick see him ’parm whale.”

The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and
with nothing special to engage them, the Pequod’s
crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced
by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian
Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what
whalemen call a lively ground; that is, it affords
fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish,
and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters,
than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore
ground off Peru.

It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and
with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal
shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an
enchanted air. No resolution could withstand
it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness,
at last my soul went out of my body; though my body
still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after
the power which first moved it is withdrawn.

Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed
that the seamen at the main and mizzen mast-heads
were already drowsy. So that at last all three
of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every
swing that we made there was a nod from below from
the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded
their indolent crests; and across the wide trance
of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over
all.

Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed
eyes; like vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some
invisible, gracious agency preserved me; with a shock
I came back to life. And lo! close under our
lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale
lay rolling in the water like the capsized hull of
a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian
hue, glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror.
But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and
ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapory jet,
the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his
pipe of a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor
whale, was thy last. As if struck by some enchanter’s
wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all
at once started into wakefulness; and more than a
score of voices from all parts of the vessel, simultaneously
with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the
accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly
spouted the sparkling brine into the air.

“Clear away the boats! Luff!” cried
Ahab. And obeying his own order, he dashed the
helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.